| Western therapeutic treatment of phobic anxiety comes into three broad categories: psychotherapy, behavioral therapy and medication. Briefly, psychotherapy involves what is known as the 'talking cure', the attempt to bring unconscious material into consciousness through association, and discussion in a supportive environment. Behavioral therapy is aimed not at uncovering the causes of the phobia, but at the person's patterns of thinking and behavior, working to retrain the body and mind. Medication involves the short or long term use of drugs, mainly tranquilizers.
The least effective of these therapies is medication, which is at best a short term solution, and does not allow the person to solve their own difficulties. Psychotherapy offers mixed results, since it is not always possible to access the repressed material, and it does not address the physical aspects of the phobic anxiety.
The advantages of yoga lie in its holistic approach to any so called 'mental' problem, since yoga views and treats the mind, body, emotions and energetic systems as a whole. In the case of phobias, the practices of asana, hatha yoga, pranayama, meditation and yoga nidra work to balance the nervous system and the endocrines, and the prana or energy in the body, bringing greater emotional and mental calm.
Yoga has been gaining immense popularity due to the short-term as well as long-term benefits that it provides. The aims of the yoga practitioners are extremely varied. Some are particularly inspired by the spiritual element that yoga provides; others by the increased fitness and flexibility that it results in. Some people find solutions to suffering from varied health disorders and there are others who achieve an all-round development of a calm, stress-free mind and a fit body.
According to a yogic understanding, the body, mind and emotions are comprised of and sustained by 'prana', the subtle energy or force that creates all life. Our whole being is understood as energy vibrating at different levels of intensity. Solids such as the bones, liquids such as urine and blood, and gases such as wind and the oxygen we breathe are the more gross levels, while the more subtle levels include emotions, thoughts and the energy we experience in the body in practices such as acupuncture, healing with reiki and so on. The energy bodies are linked in and through the seven chakras, which correspond with nerve plexuses, and the nadis, currents of energy – meridians – which link the chakras and extend throughout the body.
|
|
